The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, have certainly been a spectacle to watch, with some major upsets occurring across multiple sporting disciplines. Chloe Kim, the favorite to win the women’s snowboard halfpipe event, fell short to Korea’s Choi Ga-on. Alpine skiing legend Lindsey Vonn was medically evacuated after a freak accident. Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning ice dance World Championships, were edged out of the gold medal. And most surprisingly, Ilia Malinin, the far favorite to win the men’s figure skating event and undefeated competitor for the last 2 years, finished in 8th place after a particularly poorly executed long program. Yuma Kagiyama, predicted 2nd place (behind Ilia), still finished in 2nd, after he too made some major errors in his long program. The combination of these events led to the male Olympic champion who no one saw coming – Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan.
While these were all unprecedented events, let’s look at an example of another shocking event – the women’s free skate. Alysa Liu, the 20-year old native from Oakland, California, won the event, being the first American women to earn an Olympic gold medal since Sarah Hughes at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Her performance, done to “MacArthur Park Suite” by Donna Summers, was absolutely exhilarating, as her bright energy perfectly matched the upbeat music, resulting in a performance that was authentic and fully swayed the crowd. She expertly maintained high performance quality throughout the whole program, providing a complete and well-rounded skate that accentuated not just her natural athleticism, but her creative personality and artistry as well. The result? An ending pose that had her jumping off the ice, yelling “That’s what I’m talking about!!”, and knowing that she was going to be a strong contender for that first place position.
After the final two skaters from Japan, Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai, completed their programs and received their scores, it was official. Alysa Liu is the 2026 women’s Olympic champion. So what made her win as shocking as Ilia’s defeat? Her mentality.
I firmly believe that while the Olympics is the most rewarding stage on the planet, it also comes with such a high degree of pressure, and our news programs’ choices to highlight certain athletes to such an extreme degree makes us see them as non-human, rather than real people with high levels of talent. Ilia Malinin, the 21-year old from Vienna, Virginia, is probably the greatest figure skater of all time by technicality and consistency, so it was natural that leading into the Olympics, he became America’s poster child athlete. He was highlighted in numerous commercials, performing numerous interviews, and was the highlight on all of Team USA’s posts. The expectations for the backflipping skater were through the roof, and unfortunately, when it all came down to it, he crumbled on the world’s biggest stage. The undefeated champion, the Quad God, the far favorite, finished the event in 8th place. Immediately following his defeat, instead of being allowed to process his emotions, he was once again thrown into the limelight, being immediately approached for an interview to be asked on what went so wrong in his skate. He was also highlighted in the audience for many other following figure skating events, being shown giving supportive reactions to his fellow USA teammates. While this was a good show of sportsmanship, it still highlights how even after his skate, he could not escape the eye of the camera.
This was almost verbatim a repeat of what America did to Simone Biles in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics. We set her up as the GOAT—America’s athlete to represent us in the games and bring pride home to our country. And when she got the twisties in the team event, causing her to withdraw from the individual all-around, she was immediately thrust into the public eye, as she was labeled a disappointment, a failure, and dramatic for choosing to prioritize herself over her duties as an athlete. Numerous people even questioned her commitment to the sport, suggesting that her public failure, rather than health concerns, were what caused her to withdraw. It was one of the fastest public opinion switch-ups I have ever seen, and we did the exact same thing again to Ilia. When we promote these athletes as greater than human, we don’t allow them to make mistakes. Their mistakes are disappointments for us to degrade, and we must as a country, stop doing this to our top athletes.
Alysa Liu’s performance demonstrates why escaping this insurmountable pressure is what causes success. All of the focus was on Ilia Malinin this Olympics, and Alysa, coming off a few years in retirement, was able to skate authentically for herself. She returned to the sport to show what she could do, not measure up to any extrinsic expectations forced upon her. This love for skating was apparent in her free skate, which she executed flawlessly. She was able to skate with a level of lightness and buoyancy free from the pressure that haunted Malinin, and delivered the skate of her life to win gold.
The Olympics is such an amazing event to watch. It unites countries as we see the best representations of countries’ work ethic come together to showcase their talents all at the same time. But, we as spectators must stop viewing our athletes as robots, and instead as humans. Instead of putting unsustainable levels of pressure on them to ‘bring home the gold’, we should appreciate their drive and commitment to their crafts. Maybe then we will actually see more individuals win their events.